


In Which All Things End (Don't They?)

by EverestV



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 07:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3479342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverestV/pseuds/EverestV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bear with me. At this point, everything after the first chapter is just prompt fills that fit into the story somehow (in chronological order at least). Eventually I'll get to filling in all the holes so there's more of a linear plot and more characters in the tags, just might take a while...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. So Apparently It's The End of The World

_ I can’t believe getting out of that refugee camp took this fucking long. _ Two weeks ago, she stepped onto Huxley Station just to be forced off it as soon as she gathered enough change for the pay phone.  _ Too late, you’re too late, you have to be, they probably already got evacuated by now. S would’ve been fine if she stayed in the city, she could handle herself, but she wouldn’t risk it. She wouldn’t risk Kira, she wouldn’t dare. This is a wasted trip and you know it. They’re not here. _

Toronto wasn’t completely empty, though, it couldn’t be. She had heard story after story of family and friends still stuck in transit or refusing to evacuate, and police and firefighters and paramedics called in on shifts that weren’t likely to end anytime soon. It was still  _ possible _ , just not...incredibly likely.

Sarah tightened the straps on her backpack and focused on what was ahead of her. She didn’t have a choice. She had to go back to the house to know for sure and that’s all there was to it. No backing out now. Toronto was already glowing sickly in front of her, running on half-power, and she didn’t have room to think anymore, to dwell. This was where it got tricky.

Scrambling up the perimeter fence, a hastily assembled chain link barrier at least 10 feet high, Sarah paused at the top and searched for movement.  _ Nothing close by, no cars or people or anything. It's so quiet...  _ She climbed down the other side and dropped onto the concrete, trying to ignore her protesting ankles.  _ Alright, now what, where am I? ...Shite, I don't recognize this street. It’s gonna be a bloody long walk, isn't it? _

Sarah moved forward down the median, enveloped as she was in the eerie stillness of the environment around her. The road was clear, cars were abandoned in distant parking lots, the grass was getting long and dull. She felt the need to keep quiet, like everything had been forced into a sleep easily broken by one wrong step, one wrong sound. She thought she saw something move in the fields on her left, but she didn't look. She wouldn’t risk it.

She kept walking, but after a while her eyes started drifting. She had already passed up two gas stations. It would just be a water bottle, maybe a bag of chips, a candy bar, a pack of gum. A beer. That’d be nice. She wouldn’t be picky. And everything was quiet. The traffic lights were flashing a dull red. The houses that emerged on both sides of her were hushed, restrained. She’d just be in and out, snapping fingers, gone before your eyes. No one would miss ten bucks worth of stuff, especially from a gas station. No one was around to miss it. Right?

But then the stations stopped popping up. It was only whispering houses now, rusting gates, broken-down fences. Sarah suddenly felt like she was interrupting something, something private and something alien. Something like a funeral she hadn’t been invited to but was there regardless, something like she was intruding. She started walking faster.

Eventually something clicked, the intersection seemed distantly familiar, she knew this area, somehow.  _ There's a mall down this way, I think. Maybe I should check it out. Even if I find someone...would that be the worst thing? It's too damn quiet. It’s like the city is dead. _

Sarah fixed her backpack straps again and turned down the street. But then restlessness was clawing at her throat as she realized: something was behind her, and it was the exact opposite of a guess, it was an undeniable truth. Not that she was going to turn around. She broke out in a run—legs pumping, arms working, lungs on a high-tide mind set—and the breeze felt smooth against the back of her neck, like it belonged there. She was running and things burst into color, everything felt whole, like the last part of a clock pieced into place, like all the little clogs meshed together. She didn't even consider slowing until she reached the right intersection.

That’s when she saw the police trucks. And the lumpy-looking pile in front of the main entrance of the mall. And the person being dragged out of the building to that pile. The person that wasn’t moving. And the woman who was doing the dragging, her shirt covered in blood—dark,  _ dark  _ blood. The woman who threw the person onto the pile. The pile that was made of bodies.

_ I need to get out of here. Fast. Take that car. It’ll make noise, it’ll draw attention, but if those are cops doing that shit, murdering people and leaving them out to rot, I need to get out of here. God, S wouldn’t have stayed, it’s worse than I thought. _ Sarah watched until the woman trudged back inside the mall before approaching the driver side of a nearby parked car. The door was wide open, too easy.

“I can't deal with this shite, I can't.” Sarah shook her head and climbed in, slamming the door with shaky fingers and throwing her bag in the passenger seat. “I can’t worry about an open door. It just makes things easier for me, that's all, nothing to...to...” There was a rustling behind her, raspy breaths that were growing louder, a growling noise struggling to get past a crumbling throat. She turned around with a jerk, turned around to lean between the front seats, and immediately scrambled back.

From the backseat, a...a  _ person _ was moving towards her, hand outstretched and teeth bared with ashen skin and dull, coppery eyes. It moved at a crawling pace but its limbs were twitching, growing less and less jerky, more and more fluid, as if it was waking up. The noise it was making started sounding lower and fuller and with shaking hands, Sarah clutched at her bag and clambered out of the car.

But it just followed. It managed to crawl into the front seats and squirm its way out and onto the pavement, continuing to slither forward on its stomach, not bothering to try and pick itself up. Forward momentum was all it seemed to care about. And Sarah. She could see herself reflected in its eyes, tense and stumbling backwards at a pace matching with...the  _ thing _ . Not a person anymore. Which was becoming a problem because it just kept coming, faster and faster and soon Sarah would get closer and closer to the pile of bodies and the police trucks but she couldn’t get her feet to move any  _ faster _ . She couldn’t turn and run—she couldn’t take her eyes off the thing. She swung her backpack at it, knocking its head to the side, over and over again, but its teeth were starting to tear at the fabric.

“Shit, I’m coming! Hold on!” A voice called from behind her. Sarah tripped at the sound, falling hard against the pavement. The thing was inches away now. Sarah desperately tried to kick at it while scrambling backwards. Then it was jerked away from her by a powerful kick to the temple. The woman from before was in front of Sarah now, between her and the thing, and a gun was being whipped out.

The gun went off. Blood jumped into the air. The thing lay still, a dark red hole in its skull. All Sarah could hear was ringing. The woman was facing her, kneeling down to her eye level, saying something at a frequency Sarah couldn’t pick up. Her focus was on the thing, expecting it to crawl back into pursuit. She didn’t realize she was still moving backwards until the woman grabbed at her arm. Sarah jerked it away.

“Hey, hey, it’s over. Alright? Can you look at me?” The woman’s voice was strange and strained, like a blunt object struggling to soften its edges. Sarah’s eyes snapped up to meet hers. “There we go, that’s it. Look, I’m not gonna hurt you. I swear. I’m—”

“You shot it.”

The woman hesitated before nodding curtly. “I did. It was gonna kill you. I couldn’t let that happen. I’m a cop, I was trying to—”

“You just bloody shot the thing.”

“Yes,” she was starting to get exasperated now, eyes hardening. “I did. Look, that wasn’t your buddy anymore, that wasn’t even a person anymore. Not human. You know that, don’t you? That was a threat. And you looked like you needed the help, am I wrong for—”

“I didn’t know that...person. But the people back there. In that pile.” Sarah didn’t take her eyes off the woman, the woman didn’t look away from Sarah either. “You shot them too?”

“Yeah. A few of us, at least, other officers. They’re inside trying to clear the mall. There’s too many... _ threats _ in there to risk a supply run. At least for now. They should be done soon. Are you—”

“What are you gonna do with the bodies? Take them somewhere? Identify them?”

“We just burn them, standard procedure. Can’t risk them coming back, of course. It may not happen all the time, but it happens enough. Now,” Sarah was pinned by a steely gaze. “Can you please stop interrupting me, ma’am? I need to make sure you’re alright.” The woman reached forward again, starting to pull up Sarah’s sleeve. Sarah jerked away and stood, taking a few steps back.

“Shite, stop bloody  _ touching _ me.”

The woman raised her empty hands as she slowly got to her feet, but while her body language grew still and calm, her eyes bore a simmering determination and her lips tightened in frustration. “Okay, okay. I won’t. But you need to tell me, do you have any bites or scratches from that thing? Did it hurt you at all?”

“No, I’m fine. Thanks for...thanks. That’s what you want to me say, yeah?”

“I  _ want _ ,” the woman almost growled, making Sarah tense up and her fists clench in her pockets. “To not have to shoot you. That sound good? If it broke skin at all, even from grabbing at you, we could have a problem real soon. Reports say they’re turning faster nowadays.”

“Turning? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Ma’am,” eyes shifting, weight leaning back, Sarah watched as the woman regarded her with a blatant suspicion. “Do you really not know any of this? What refugee camp did you—”

Shots rang out, three in succession. The woman’s head whipped up.

“Shit, they said they wanted to take it quietly...stay right here.” taking out her gun and shoving past Sarah, the woman raced towards the mall.

“No, wait, you—” but Sarah’s words were pointless, the woman disappeared into the building. Sarah ran two hands through her hair. “Are you kidding me...are you bloody  _ kidding _ me?” grumbling to herself, she began pacing—one, two, three steps, turn. The body of that thing was lying stiff in a growing pool of blood. “Fuck it. Let’s just follow the woman with the gun. It’s not like that plan’s ever backfired before.” Sarah tightened her backpack straps, took a deep breath, and ran inside the mall after the woman as more and more gunshots rang out.


	2. (For Our Sakes') Let's Just Call It Camping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a small moment of somewhat fluff in a time of blood and guts and death and lesbians

Beth pulled the truck to a stop in the middle of a forest clearing. She turned the key and it rumbled into silence, opening her door and hopping out without a word. Sarah glanced out the window with a frown before joining her outside.

“You sure you want to stay out in the open like this?” She asked as she followed Beth around back to the flatbed.

“Yes. It makes sense.” Beth didn’t look at her. “We’ve got a clear hundred feet all around to tip us off instead of hundred feet of trees. We can take shifts to keep watch, but here there’s less places to hide if anyone tries to sneak up.”

“Or any _thing_.” Sarah added but Beth didn’t reply. Instead she kept herself busy by passing over bags and gas cans into Sarah’s arm to put in the front seat. It was routine now, and Sarah had learned her lesson from last time. She made sure to keep the driver seat completely open. “And you don’t want to keep driving? It’s getting dark, but we have headlights now and a two-ton hunk of metal to protect us.”

Beth shook her head. “No headlights. Can’t attract attention. I want to lay low as much as possible here.”

Sarah  crossed her arms over her chest as Beth started rummaging through one of the bags. “So no fire tonight?”

“No fire.”

“But it’s bloody _cold_ and we’re in the middle of nowhere. No one’s gonna see it.”

“We don’t know that for sure.” Beth took out the blankets she was looking for and started setting up the flatbed, her movements exact and mechanic. Sarah wished she would meet her gaze for once. “We haven’t scouted the area but it’s late to do it now. It’s just for the night anyway. You can manage.”

“Sure. Right.” As a finishing touch, Sarah watched as Beth set her rifle down by the makeshift pillow she made and finally turn to her. Her eyes were blank and Sarah felt her chest tighten at the sight. She wasn’t sure why she expected anything different.

“Do you mind taking the first shift? I think I’ve been driving too long.” Her voice was quiet but it still easily permeated through the dead air around them, wrapping up Sarah in a blanket of numbness and a soft, dry crackle. Sarah stood taller at that. _No. She can’t get sick._ No.

“Uh, yeah, of course.” Sarah ran a hand through her hair as she swung her rifle around to her front and checked to see if it was loud. Now it was her that avoided the other’s gaze. “Whatever you need.” With one fluid movement, she jumped up into the flatbed and climbed up to the roof of the car, settling in with both hands on her gun and at the ready.

Beth, in contrast, crawled onto the flatbed reluctantly. “Thanks. Um, here. Pretend it’s a fire.” Sarah glanced down at the blanket she was offering her, feeling the corners of her mouth relax. Her shoulders followed close behind and she shook her head.

“No, you take it. I’ll be fine.”

Beth paused a beat but didn’t argue, and through side glances Sarah watched as she tried getting comfortable against the scratchy sheets. Her eyes closed once she found a good position, but by now Sarah knew her. She knew it wouldn’t last. And instead Beth would toss and turn all night if she even got a wink of sleep in at all.

A wink, of course, was better than nothing and she knew Beth was getting more and more tired by the day. She could see it in the way Beth carried around her gun limply on patrols, could see it in the way she met each morning with a half-squinted expression, could see it in the way she simply held herself differently than before. The more Sarah thought about it, the more the idea scared her, and there was enough scary things waiting out there in the dark.

“Hey, it’s kinda like camping, yeah?” Sarah should be used to the wind whistling through empty trees by now. She should be used to the threat of silence, the threat of it being broken with a sudden shot. She should be used to waiting and watching, watching and waiting, finger always on the trigger, attention always knife-point sharp. She should be. And she should also let Beth sleep. But tonight felt colder and she needed the warm comfort of voices drifting through the air like a flickering candle. “Sleeping under the stars and all that. You can actually see them now.”

Beth hummed softly and Sarah glanced down at her. She was already laying on her back with her eyes open, searching the sky with a lethargic curiosity. “Yeah. They’re still kinda dim though. We’re getting closer to Toronto—”

“Beth,” Sarah chided, trying to exaggerate her best impression of a scolding mother. “We’re _camping_ now. No talk of the civilized world until we get home, yeah? This trip is supposed to be fun and relaxing.” She set her gun down in her lap and leaned back, fingers laced behind her head, smiling like she lay tanning underneath the sun.

“Civilized?” Beth hissed under her breath as she sat up and turned to face behind her. “ _Relaxing_?! Sarah, this isn’t some—”

Sarah cleared her throat and wore a hard stare before Beth flopped down in inevitable defeat. “As I was saying, we should plan what we’re gonna do tomorrow. Maybe take a nice little hike, have a picnic on a picturesque cliff. We’ll take pictures the whole way, maybe even pick one for the Christmas card.”

“We could find somewhere to fish.” Beth grumbled, eyes closed and figured turned on her side. “It’d be nice to eat something fresh for once.”

“Oh, you’re _right_.” Sarah nodded with a vigor that she know Beth wouldn’t see. “All the trail mix and s’mores and hot dogs we’ve been having, completely cheating. We’ll catch a nice salmon, grill it over our Foreman, and eat like rustic royalty. Sound like a plan?”

“We’re nowhere near any salmon.”

“Oi, killjoy, trying to make an effort here.” Sarah said playfully and nudged Beth’s shoulder with her boot. “At least play along.”

“Can I play along by sleeping? I feel like I’m distracting you from...looking out for...garbage-stealing bears or something.”

“Fine,” Sarah said with a mocking sigh, feeling the guilt pang sharp and small at the center of her chest. “But we’re still camping in the morning. Don’t forget that.”

“Whatever you say.” Beth conceded and shifted farther under the blanket. “Wake me up in a few hours, okay?”

Losing all sense of humor, deflating against the absence of aberration, Sarah’s voice became low and soft. “Alright,”

Once Beth stilled enough, Sarah turned her attention back up to the night sky, searching out the few constellations she knew. She drew lines in her mind, connecting each pinprick of light after the other, watching as ancient creatures woke to prowl their celestial territory. She didn’t dare to call them monsters, didn’t dare to add them to the running list of horrors that already existed on the ground. She didn’t dare to look out into the forest, didn’t dare to draw shapes there too, didn’t dare to give faces to invisible predators.

But looking into the front seat would only remind her of the numbers Beth was so fond of rattling off, _this will last us a week, we can use this four more times, we’ll need two more of these soon, we have to start rationing this in a couple of days._ And looking down at her boots would make her yearn for a better pair, force her focus to become restricted, leave her vulnerable to any approaching threats. While looking at the flatbed—ghosting over Beth’s pale face with her gaze—would leave her with a warm sense of dread or a heated urge to protect or a tender spot of something deeper and she didn’t have the strength to face that tonight.

No. It was better to look upwards.

At least the sky, even though flat and dark and cold, was constant. It was safe. And she needed more of that in her life.


	3. Until At Last They Fell (Victims Of Their Own Drug)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FBB '16 March Monthly Challenge: Heroes and Villians
> 
> that post-apocalyptic aesthetic: looking through chain-linked fences and feeling utterly helpless, tangling your fingers around the metal in front of you—unsure of whether you’re clawing to get past, clawing to break through, clawing to help, or clinging to the nearest thing that can steady yourself in the face of such desperation. the world is dying, and you’re removed from the slaughter, stuck behind a fence, forced to watch everything crumble while you stand tall, while you stand still.

Sarah kept glancing worriedly at the gas tank light. She could feel her anxiety rise steadily, could feel the tension in her fingers against the worn leather of the steering wheel, could feel her knee start getting jittery. The sky was darkening like the ominous sound of a lone wolf howling, like a silky blanket growing worn and rough with time, like flowers wilting and dying before your very eyes, like a warning. It was getting dark, the car was slowing, but they were still out in the open.

Beth was sleeping in the passenger seat. Probably, at least. It had been some time now since she last let herself close her eyes while they were on the move. Sarah felt her chest tighten painfully as she broke the rare reprieve.

“Hey. Beth?” Soft voices seemed to sound so out of place now. Tense whispers were common, just like screams and shouts and cries of pain. They made sense. Not gentle murmurings. Sarah tried hard to change that when she could, especially around Beth, the woman who’d jump awake with as little as a cold breeze.

Her eyes opened this time without their instinctive panic and it was a small kind of victory. “Yeah? You want to stop for the night?”

“Sure, but, I think we might have to make a run in the morning. We’re getting pretty low on gas and scrounging up some food might not be a bad idea either.” Sarah bit her lip, trying to keep her knee still, knowing Beth would be watching even the slightest of movements now that she was awake. No need in adding to Beth’s stress by letting her own become too obvious.

“Shit, okay. Thought we’d make it a bit farther. Um...” Dutifully, Beth started pulling out their road map of the area. “We can...I mean there’s a little—”

“No, no, don’t worry about it now.” The roads were empty, they were always empty, of course they were, and Sarah turned to look at Beth, turned to raise an open hand and lower the map before it enveloped her. “We can just make plans in the morning.”

Beth hesitated for a moment before nodding and folding the map, letting it rest idly on her lap. She didn’t ask why Sarah had woken her if it _wasn’t_ to make plans, she understood what silence could do a person, what _aloneness_ could do, even if it was only felt and not seen.

“Did you see any good places to stow up?” Beth asked in a low, almost gravelly voice. She stretched as much as she could in her seat, settling her rifle more comfortably against her shoulder.

“Oh, uh, not really. I was actually getting kinda...you know, concerned about that.”

Beth nodded, glancing around at the empty, dusty fields around them. “Something will turn up. We’re getting far enough north where all this praire will turn into forest eventually.”

Sarah nodded, hesitating before she brought up the dreaded topic again. “Because you don’t want to settle in one of these farmhouses for the night? It’d be much easier to hide the truck in a barn than under a bunch of leaves.”

“No, we’ve been over this.” _Not really,_ Sarah thought but didn’t voice it. _You always dance around the subject._ “And anyway, I thought you were getting into the whole camping aesthetic or whatever you want to call it.”

“Camping. Yeah.” Sarah nodded again and kept her peace, driving the rest of the way without disturbing the quiet between them again. Beth was right, of course—it didn’t take long before they made it to a little patch of woods off the highway. And settling in for the night was like it always was, routine and systematic: Sarah moving the supplies to the passenger seat, Beth going out to take a quick sweep of the place, Sarah making a bed for herself on the ground underneath the truck bed, Beth starting up a small fire to have light and warmth to keep watch by.

But when their movements were finally still and the only sounds between them was crackling wood and the nighttime droning of the forest, Sarah couldn’t get herself to sleep, couldn’t stop thinking. Because _this_ , this sleeping under a car for protection, staring up at metal piping instead of stars, this only sleeping an hour or two at a time, waking up the other with apologetic hands, this periodic need to do a perimeter check, loaded rifle against the front of your chest and handgun tucked into your pants and knife held firmly between tense fingers—this wasn’t camping. This wasn’t normal.

Tomorrow they’d be walking into a town, or city if they were especially unlucky, but that wouldn’t feel normal either. It would feel incredibly _un_ -normal. And Sarah doubted she was ready.

\---

“Wait, you want to take the exit? You don’t think that’d get us too close?” Sarah sat up straighter in the passenger seat, tightened her grip on the rifle in her hands. “I’m sure we could find a place to hide the truck a little farther away.”

“Calculated risk,” Beth offered under her breath, then grew silent. Sarah recognized the halting lilt in her voice and waited. “I’m not sure, I just have a bad feeling. Emsdale. I think I heard about it back in Toronto.”

“Not good things, I take it?”

Beth frowned, fingers clenching and unclenching the steering wheel. “Can’t remember. Just know the name from somewhere. So I kinda wanna keep the car close if we need to get out quick.”

“Well we can’t get anywhere quick if we don’t get gas soon.”

“I know. But the next closest option isn’t exactly close. This is it. We gotta make it work.”

Sarah said nothing, just ran her fingers over the safety, made sure it was off, staring out the window, searching, eyes darting back and forth. They were surrounded by dense woods on both sides, but Beth didn’t slow down. Not even when the guard rail ended and the edges of the road faded into gravel. Sarah’s knee started bouncing. She didn’t dare look away from the window.

After an impossibly long stretch of silence and several side roads that did little to ease Sarah’s nervousness as Beth passed them up, a small dirt lot and an accompanying truck rental came into view. Beth slowed.

“This seems okay. There might be some gas in these moving trucks and it won’t look too suspicious if we park here while we’re in town.” Beth made a rolling stop at the entrance, waiting for a huff of approval from Sarah before continuing. “I can pack away the supplies if you want to do a quick sweep. Just around the lot for now, maybe check a few of those trailers too?”

“Yeah. We’ll check the rental building after. Together.”

“Of course.”

Sarah nodded and hopped out as Beth stopped in one of the parking spaces, leaving her to hide most of the supplies under seats and in glove compartments while the rest went into their backpacks. In the meantime, Sarah approached the nearest trailer with gentle steps and eyes that scanned the perimeter and arms keeping her rifle close to her chest.

 _‘Looking intimidating enough can deter most conflicts before they even start. Walk confident, stand confident, don’t lean against walls like that. Back straight, feet planted; every time. Always act like you know what you’re doing— no offense. Not many people are gonna approach you if they see you as a threat.’_ Sarah recalled Beth’s words the first time they did a run like this together and held the memory firmly at the forefront of her mind. She’d had a lot of practice since then, gained a lot of experience, but the right stance and the right posture, the correct live-saving techniques still hadn’t come naturally to her, not like it did with Beth. She sometimes wondered why she was still being dragged along, or why Beth started dragging her along in the first place.

Not that she had time to think about it now. “Safety in numbers. Simple as that,” she told herself as she went down the line of attachable moving trailers, pounding twice on the doors before hauling them open and checking for any supplies inside. All were empty except for one.

She heard the labored breathing and inhuman croaks without having to knock first, the noises growing slightly in volume as she drew near. At this point, she couldn’t afford to hesitate. Sarah flung open the door with a sharp intake of breath and jumped back. The infected inside sprung into action like a whip cracking: its arms jerked toward her—recognizing _prey_ and reacting with _kill_ in an instant—as the luminescence of the fungus growth on its skin dimmed in the sudden daylight.

“Shit,” Sarah growled through gritted teeth when she realized the thing was coming on too fast, clenched fists swinging with too much built up momentum, teeth gnashing too quickly after seeing her. She took two heavy hits—to her collarbone, to the side of her head—before she was able to knock it off its feet, plant a foot on its chest, and send her knife down into the thing’s head. It was a sloppy kill at best: blood splattering in waves onto her shirt, the infected continuing to jerk for too long after the stab. She plunged the knife in deeper, grimacing and resisting the urge to close her eyes against the rising bile in her throat, and waited until it was completely still and several seconds after that, before removing the knife with some effort.

“Sarah.” Beth’s voice sounded and she looked up at her partner, right into the barrel of a gun aimed between her eyes from a few feet away. “Are you alright?”

Standing slowly and backing away from the body, she nodded. “No, yeah, I’m fine. Just caught me by surprise, is all, but I’m good. No scratches, no bites, nothing.” Beth lowered the gun slowly. “It was a stalker, been in that trailer for a while. That’s a good sign, right? That it’s not recently infected?”

Beth stuck her gun in her waistband and visibly relaxed, shoulders dropping and expression calming. “Could be, kinda depends. It might mean there’s more late-stage infected in the area, turned around the same time as this one here—which would be a problem. Or it just means this was a survivor that got bitten, was left in there by its group, and so it’s the only one we have to deal with.” Sarah glanced back down at the body underneath her foot and rubbed at her throbbing shoulder: _bloody hell, it’s not broken, just calm down_. “Either way, it doesn’t change things for now. Let’s just finish up here and then head into town. But only if you’re sure you’re alright.”

“No, no, I’m good. Probably a few bruises—my shoulder, my head—but,” Sarah glanced down at her shirt. “Nothing else. The blood didn’t spray anywhere near my mouth or anything, we’re fine.”

“Good.” Beth reached out, gripped Sarah’s forearm, squeezed lightly, offered the slightest ghost of a smile, guided her away from the body, took the knife from her shaking hands and cleaned it in the grass before giving it back. “Your pack is in the truck bed. Why don’t you start at the far end of cars and I’ll take this end?”

Sarah nodded and moved away from her touch reluctantly, slowly, trudging back across the lot as she shook her head and shook out her hands and rolled her shoulder and wiped away the sweat from the back of her neck. _Get it together, Manning. Deep breaths. The thing’s dead for good this time so move the hell on. You can’t keep doing this every time._

Shouldering her pack with a slight wince, she started toward the first car and broke in without much trouble. Beth’s list of what to look for ran through her head in pristine order, prioritized with precision, methodical and perfect, memorized as completely as a prayer. Still, she couldn’t help herself from checking for any CDs before she looked for supplies.

\---

There was a variety store at the very edge of town and the two couldn’t have breathed a bigger sigh of relief. The truck they found was spoiling them, Beth was sure of it. Whenever they had to walk anywhere, they were always too on edge, too jumpy. _At least Sarah isn’t the type to be trigger-happy. Shit, thank god for Sarah._

“I’m gonna check that pick-up. You got the area covered?” Beth glanced around, at the gravel lot of the store, at the intersection it sat on, at the forest covering everything that wasn’t asphalt or rock. Sarah waited patiently for her partner’s answer.

“Yeah I’ve got it.” She muttered the words under her breath, keeping her voice low and steady as Sarah approached the car and checked the gas tank.

“I’ve got a little here,” she reported back before unclipping her siphon hose from her belt and taking out a gas can from her pack. It was one of Beth’s rules when going anywhere that could be populated: never reveal what supplies you have or are looking for. The last thing they needed was some scavenging survivor putting two and two together before finding and stealing their truck.

Once Sarah was finished getting what gas was left from the abandoned truck, the two started for the store. Cracking open the door with handgun out and aimed, Beth scoped out the inside carefully. Sarah's back pressed against hers, posture and aim mirroring her own, as she covered the intersection outside.

“I've got a broken window, back left, could be an escape route.” Beth whispered into Sarah’s ear and waited for an affirming nod. “Two backrooms, closed doors. No movement, no visible targets, no obvious fungal growth, no spores. Supplies will be clean. You ready?”

“There’s an old phone box on my right behind a supporting pillar. I'll be out of sight, but close enough to you.” Sarah whispered the reply and gave Beth a minute to process and approve with a nod. “For backup, there's good tree and bush cover at the entrance of the lot, on my right.”

Beth nodded as Sarah crept away to her position, only lowering her handgun once Sarah’s rifle was set and aimed. Beth took out her knife before slamming the butt of her own rifle against the door frame three times.

The response was immediate. As the loud bangs echoed through the store, growls and snarling erupted and started for the entrance, accompanied by the inhuman groans that were all too familiar and the crashings of supplies and shelving. Beth crouched in a ready stance.

“Two runners and one clicker in sight.” She reported back in a steady voice, calm and linear and confident. Her hands didn’t shake, her gaze was hardened and focused, the world around her slipped under the influence of violence-induced tunnel vision and everything clicked into something she could understand.

Beth dodged the reach of the first runner and stabbed her knife through its head as it stumbled past her. The second, she easily pinned against the store’s brick wall, forearm digging into its throat, as she drove her knife through its eye socket and back out again. Her blade, her shirt, her hands were all splattered in blood—dark and hot and thick and oozing—and made her own vessels all the more driven, all the more _alive_. The clicker was coming on faster than she’d like, but she turned on it regardless, knife in hand with handgun still tucked away, no plan in mind besides _kill_.

But then came a shot and it lurched to the side, dead and motionless before it even hit the ground. “Oi, save some for the rest of us, yeah?” Sarah’s tense whisper-shout made something snap inside Beth and she looked up, picking away the joking tone that felt forced to reveal the panic-stricken concern in the heat of battle. _I’ve gotta stop losing myself like this, it’s going to put us both in danger._ At this point it was a mantra.

“Right. Sorry.” Taking out her handgun, all attempts at stealth broken by Sarah’s loud kill, Beth glanced back inside and scoped the place again. “I hear another clicker inside, but it’s not—”

A scream split the air and Beth’s eyes shot to meet Sarah’s. It was a scream of pain, a scream of terror, and a scream that was very, very human.

Immediately, the two raced towards the entrance of the parking lot, kicking up splashes of gravel with each stride they took, arms pumping hard and hands only holding guns to keep them out of the way of their knees. Sarah got there first, but Beth dove into the aforementioned backup patch of bushes a split-second after, the two automatically flattening on their stomachs before placing matching aims at the store’s doors.

“Did you see them? The human or clicker?” Sarah hissed through gritted teeth, breaths coming out in harsh pants.

Beth was practically holding her own breath in trying not to sound similarly panicked and strained. They couldn’t afford to both be scared enough to mess up on accident. “No. Sounded like a woman, though, right? The human? Middle-aged?”

“Yeah, I—”

Gunshots, several. The two ducked lower behind their cover, Sarah squeezed her eyes shut for a second, Beth bit her lip and stared anxiously through her rifle’s scope at the door. _That’s too many shots, that person is scared. That person is cornered and desperate or...dear god, please don’t let it be a bloater..._

There was a substantial pause between firing and Beth’s finger eased off the trigger. Otherwise, neither moved. They knew better than that. The protocol was to wait at least seven minutes: seven minutes to fight off an infected monster or seven minutes to turn into one.

 _Lucky number seven, is that it?_ Sarah once asked about the whole thing, chuckling nervously.

_It's not luck. It's a test._

“...fifty seven, fifty eight, fifty nine, I-I’ve got seven.” Sarah’s counting grew out of its murmur and nudged through the air at Beth for an affirmation. But Sarah always counted fast.

After a few moments of tense anticipation, Beth nodded. “Seven. Alright, on me, we'll go around the lot through these bushes and check—”

The doors burst open and the two shoved their bellies into the ground again, eyes blinking wide and fingers jerking onto their triggers. The sound certainly wasn't a gunshot—it wasn’t as loud, it didn't resound through the air like one, and it couldn’t have alerted any nearby infected or survivors—but it made the hairs on Beth’s neck stand up all the same. Nothing so sudden or loud was supposed to follow the seven-minute mark.

“Bloody hell, look at her...” Sarah’s voice was hushed and weighted. Beth took a second look at the survivor that— at the _girl_ that ran out of the store.

She couldn't have been older than twelve, maybe closer to ten, but she was covered in blood and gripping a knife with panic-induced abandon: like it wasn’t a scarlet-stained _weapon_ , like she was used to its weight, like she had used it before, like she would use it again. Weeks ago, Beth would’ve jumped in on instinct—plucked the knife from the girl’s hands, gathered the girl high up in her arms, ran like hell until she and the girl were somewhere, anywhere safe. Now she felt rooted to the ground by an anchor that was steadily sinking into the earth, all while her blood screamed commands she couldn’t understand.

An infected was close on the girl’s heels—a stalker Beth had hardly noticed until it grabbed the backpack that was clearly weighing the poor girl down and pulled. The girl tripped, she fell, the stalker was clawing at her clothes, she was crying, Beth could see the tears streaking through the blood on her cheeks.

For a moment, there was a wrestling match inside Beth’s chest, a brief skirmish between the dark and the darker of her instincts, the prison-guard shadows and their hidden-away captives. The fight was over as soon as it began and she was left trembling on the battlefield.

Wordlessly and with loaded rifle slipping out of her grip, Beth pressed two fingers to the back of Sarah’s hand and tapped three times, their signal for _stay here, don’t move_. Sarah’s response was immediate: she practically threw the gun out of her hands just to snap to Beth’s forearm, latching onto it with digging fingers and sporadic tugging motions.

Sarah’s eyes never left the girl but the dull expression in her eyes was clear enough. There was a plea there, blurred by a trembling struggle just below the surface, and Beth understood. There was a wrestling match inside Sarah’s chest too. The difference was that Beth had never considered approaching the girl, just didn’t want Sarah to, and faced with the shaking pressure of Sarah’s touch, Beth wasn’t going to change her mind now.

Besides, the girl’s knife was suddenly ringing through the air and then fell silent as she plunged it over and over into the infected’s body, stabbing through fungus stalks, ripping at already-shredded clothes, bloodying rotting fingers and failing eyes. It was dead long before the girl stopped attacking. _She can handle this, she can survive, she doesn’t need us._ But Sarah’s grip on Beth just grew tighter as her voice fell into almost muted mumblings. “We don’t intervene, we never intervene, we wait, it’s the rule...we wait.”

 _Wait, another one. It doesn’t end, it never ends._ Groaning, inhuman moans of pain, low and spluttering and pitiful—a runner came bumbling out of the store. It locked eyes on its prey sprawled in the middle of the parking lot and the girl let out a sob as she noticed her new predator, dropping the knife like she had been caught playing with something she shouldn’t have, crawling away from the stalker’s body like it was already so easily forgotten. “Mommy...no, no, mommy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“Oh fuck.” Sarah let go of Beth. She let go of her rifle and tossed it aside. She squeezed her eyes shut. She dropped her head in her hands and trembled against the cold softness of the apathetic grass beneath her. Beth didn’t look away, Beth couldn’t look away, but she couldn’t see what was in front of her either.

All she saw were those missing child reports she used to pass on her way to her work, all she saw was the wandering little boy she once steered back to his class during a school tour of the precinct, all she saw were the kids she ferried across busy streets during odd crosswalk shifts she used to pick up, all she saw were the middle schoolers marveling at the K-9 unit during a local lockdown drill. She saw Maya and the countless mornings Beth drove her to school when Art had an urgent case, she saw Maya and every time the two of them surprised Art with a homemade dinner instead of the usual take-out, she saw Maya and remembered every bedtime story dutifully absorbed, every school craft proudly presented, every cartoon where the bad guys lost and the good guys won and justice was served and there was a magical, happy ending.

The girl was screaming and crying, curled in on herself and clutching her head close to her chest as the runner pounded its fists against her tiny body. Eventually she fell silent and still at the bloody hands of what used to belong to her mother and Beth’s playback memories sounded out of place with no other background noise to muffle them.

 _Good guys always win, but who won this time? And who lost?_ Beth couldn’t tell if she and Sarah were the passive viewers of a kids’ cartoon or the bystanders also at fault in the situation or the bad guys this time around or the lucky jackpot winners in the game of survival or the disillusioned writers of every good vs. evil story ever plucked out of thin air.

She should be able to think clearly now, seeing that the screaming had stopped...

No, she hadn’t been able to think clearly since the screaming started.

But now, but now...if she didn’t move from this spot, she never would. She knew that. _Get up, Childs, you’re not the hero in this story. You made your decision and you can’t rewind time. The girl’s dead, that runner is not, focus on the facts. Sarah is fine, neither of you got hurt. There’s a store to raid, backpacks to scavenge. Get up, get up._

Slowly, Beth pushed herself up from the ground and through the bushes, noticing with a hollow pang that Sarah didn’t try to stop her this time. She hadn’t moved. _It’s over, it’s over, and she feels it too. She must._

 _Now you just have to kill the...dammit, stop shaking first._ Beth was moving toward the feasting runner with uncareful steps, knowing the thing’s meal would be distracting enough, and struggled to unsheathe her knife. Her heartbeat was shaking too much, her fingers were vibrating. She breathed in deep, then breathed out: rinsed, repeated—latching onto any nearby memory, saw Sarah’s hand gripping her forearm, fingers digging in, strength keeping her close. The knife rang out. Her arm wrapped around the runner, pressing against its neck, and pulled back hard as her opposite hand brought down the killing blow. Blood sprayed into the air, ran onto her clothes, but she pulled far enough back that the two of them dripped nothing on the girl’s body.

The girl’s body. It was as if the runner suddenly limp against her own was weightless because Beth stared forward, saw that girl’s head forced unnaturally to the side, saw that girl staring right back at her with eyes unseeing, and she could feel nothing but that stare. It was crushing her, steadily, until she only had the strength to push the runner off her and fall onto her back against the ground. Her arm, knife still in hand, flopped over her eyes and she breathed. Breathed and breathed. The world fell away so completely, she could’ve fallen asleep.

If she did, it was Sarah’s voice that woke her.

“We have to bury them.” Beth lifted her arm and glanced to her side. Sarah had her knees brought up against her chest and sat still next to her, very still. The slight rise and fall of her chest and her hushed voice was the only thing that gave her away—Beth couldn’t trust open eyes anymore. “I know what you’re gonna say, I know you don’t think it’s worth the effort, I know we’d just be wasting our time, _I know_ , but...w-we owe it to them. We have to bury them.”

Beth sat up and glanced at the two bodies—both sets of eyes were closed, just like their mouths, and they laid on their backs with arms crossed neatly over still stomachs and bags carefully placed at their sides. Sarah had spots of blood on her hands. Beth reached out and took them into her own. “Sarah...”

“I’m sure we could find shovels inside and the mom might still have a wallet on her. A little scrap of metal and a permanent marker or paint or something— I mean, there’s tons of soft ground around, maybe we find somewhere under a big tree? That’s it, that’s all we would need, we don’t have to use anything we would’ve taken otherwise.”

She squeezed Sarah’s hands and held on tight. “We’ve spent too much time here as it is. Those gunshots could have—”

“Beth, please. For once, stop thinking about us. This is...they’re more important.” Sarah’s eyes were burning, red-rimmed and boring a hole through Beth’s chest. Because at the same time they were tender, but just slightly, as if she was trying to hide it, biting the edge of her lip like the pain of it could stop her from letting any vulnerability pass her defenses. But Beth...it gave her heart vertigo as she realized that she knew Sarah better than that. The black she surrounded herself with was blurred, her leather softened, and she was just the woman who’d stare at her daughter’s handwritten letter for hours until she fell asleep.

Beth remembered the one night she hadn’t: it was the one night the two of them could afford to sleep the whole night through, under the same blanket, breathing the same air, close enough to guarantee that they’d stay that close until morning.

Beth was squeezing Sarah’s hands like she was ready for something to pull against her grip. Sarah squeezed back.

“No, you’re right. Sh-Shit, of course you’re right, I...I’m gonna get those supplies, um...come with me?”

Sarah stood and tugged Beth up with her. The concepts of efficiency and caution—the idea that one should stay behind to search the bodies, scavenge the bags, stand watch for any other threats—was lost on them. “You don’t have to ask.”

\---

It was still Beth’s turn to drive, but Sarah had the feeling that even if it wasn’t, she would’ve got in the driver’s seat anyway. Sarah’s hands had started shaking again the second they touched the shovel and she knew Beth saw. Beth always saw.

That omniscience she carried like a burden was comforting, always had been. It just took Sarah time to realize it. Right now, it felt like the most undeniable truth she could think of. The only problem was that an omniscience like that could only occupy one soul at a time and times like this, when Sarah could practically drown in Beth’s silence, was when she wished such a burden could be switched off between the two of them.

_Why don’t I listen to myself instead? Stop thinking about us. There’s more important things._

“You know, we did the right thing.” Sarah said against the air between them. “Er, burying the girl and her moms, that is. It’s what they deserved.” She looked down at the small locket in her hands, a token she hoped would serve as a warning to never let something like this repeat itself. The image of those three in their grave—the little girl in between her two mothers, clutching at the picture of the family and their dog, the only thing inside the locket she had worn around her neck, while all three rested with skin cleaned away of blood and bunches of flowers and grass covering their exposed wounds—burned at the back of her eyelids. “But they shouldn’t have...we just can’t let that happen again, we should’ve helped. We have to next time, we _have_ to.”

Sarah stared at Beth’s profile, waiting for any signs of budding protest. All she saw was Beth’s knuckles turn white as she gripped the steering wheel with a renewed vigor, and an inaudible mumble pass her lips.

“We can’t survive if it’s...if it’s at the cost of our _humanity_ , we just can’t.” Sarah turned to stare out the windshield, closing her hands tightly around the locket: a promise seeping into every inch of her rib cage. “Your rules have gotten us this far and I’m grateful, no question. But they’ve also gotten us far enough where we can afford to come out of the shadows when we need to and today...today we really, really needed to. That little girl, Maisie, she was too young to be fighting so many, to be fighting period. And she shouldn’t have had to see both her parents die right in front of her, not like that. That was—"

“It’s my fault, I know.” Beth’s voice was crumpling, not just frayed at the edges or slightly wrinkled, but steadily falling apart and everything inside Sarah fell limp. “I didn’t jump in and I didn’t let you either, and I should’ve done something, I know I should have, but I didn’t even think about it until after she was...Sarah, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”

Sarah didn’t think to stop herself, she doubted she even could if she tried. So her hand reached out without resistance and carefully wiped at the tears falling down Beth’s cheeks. She tried not to linger on the thought of lips pressing assurances onto skin. She tried to keep her touch as gentle and as soft as possible, as if she could make Beth believe her hand wasn’t actually there, since she figured Beth would just pull away if the touch felt anything close to a caress but...but, but, but then Beth leaned her cheek into Sarah’s hand and Sarah’s heartbeat stuttered into an off-beat rhythm and Sarah could swear her vision turned blue at the edges.

“N-No...no, no, _we_ should’ve done something.” Sarah forced her voice into something comprehensible, the very opposite of her breathing cycles. “And we will, okay? We will next time, we’re gonna make it up to ourselves and we’re gonna make it up to _them_. We can do this. You and me. We can live life with...with _responsibility_ , with the thought...that life is more than just base survival, we can _make_ it more than that.”

There was a small moment of stillness, of a soft kind of quiet that seeped into Sarah’s very bones. Then: the smallest, slightest nod.

Sarah couldn’t dream of pulling her hand away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course love doesn’t make sense. Of course love has no rhyme or reason. Love isn’t brains, children, i t ’ s b l o o d . Blood screaming inside you to work its will.
> 
> There’s a war in me  
> between dark and darker,  
> between the shadows  
> and the things they hide.  
> — This isn’t a story about courage. This is a story about fear.
> 
> Some days I feel so much  
> I want to tear my heart  
> out of my chest  
> so I can stop feeling.  
> Some days I feel so little  
> that I am not sure  
> I am even alive anymore.  
> I do not know  
> which one is the blessing  
> and which one is the curse.


End file.
